


Paperboy (second version)

by Veraverorum (your_Mother)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_Mother/pseuds/Veraverorum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ori has a peculiar gift. Nori too has one.<br/>Maybe a gift they could both receive would be to get to know each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paperboy (second version)

Ori was a quiet child. He was small and covered in big woolly sweaters and scarves till the point he disappeared under the mountains of clothes. It wasn't even that their mother imposed the attire on him, no. But the child felt more comfortable that way and so be it, he could have worn an entire flock and his family would have approved of it.  
  
And he had a gift.  
  
He had started showing early an astounding ability of reading and writing, so their mother had made all in her possibilities to enrol him in school earlier than what was the common age for a dwarfling. But the teachers had not the ability to follow both the regular class and Ori, so a personal tutor had to be found to teach him what he had not yet learnt by himself.  
  
Even though the private lessons occupied a good portion of his day, Ori was restless at home as well. He wrote and copied books and exercised. There was always a feather clutched in his small hand and a leather covered notebook in a pocket to follow him around, and one could be sure that somewhere in the room there must have been an ink bottle ready to be used.  
  
So he wrote and his gift consisted in creating stories.  
  
They were cute things that made every dwarf who read them smile.  
  
He would quickly look at his audience, take some brief minutes apart for himself to ponder on the story and write it down on his notebook and then hand it over for the reader to enjoy.  
  
The smiles and kind words Ori received where the biggest present for him and encouraged the little dwarf to carry on the habit.  
  
The dwarfling was always so enraptured in his writing that their mother had no qualm in leaving him at home under the surveillance of the middle child. Or maybe she left Ori at home to keep an eye on the vagabond dwarf. Ori was quite responsible for his young age.  
  
Nori instead was a problematic child and the cause of Dori's premature white locks, according to him. He was in that rebellious stage that hits some individuals harder than others. It was rare to find him loitering around the house given that he was almost never there. Nori travelled. He had the need to travel and to find something that was not there nor anywhere.  
  
Maybe that was his own gift. A restlessness that could not be quenched.  
  
Nori was sitting on a chair, fidgeting while he checked the cleanness of his nails while Ori kept gazing at him.  
  
The two brothers had never spent much time in the company of each other, and that showed in the almost complete lack of a relationship between them. There had never been the cuddles or the playful nudges exchanged between brothers.  
  
Nori always had a little present for Ori when he returned home after months of missing, but that could not buy affection and the middle one knew it. He was feeling the toll of his absence in his little brother's life at that moment.  
  
The dwarfling did not even blink his big round eyes on him.  
  
Nori had been told multiple times he had an annoying gaze, but he was sure the dwarfling could win on him any given day.  
  
Ori had pretty brown eyes and that was easy even for Nori to admit, but that did nothing to help the feeling of being explored and assessed, revealed to somebody's scrutiny.  
  
It made Nori uneasy. Letting people close was dangerous, even if they were the estranged little brother one had to take care of.  
  
So Nori, after the inspections of his nails revealed them to be neat enough for dwarven standards, kept twirling the spoon into the cup of tea gone cold that Dori had brewed for him before leaving for work. He had been sitting at the table for half an hour already, he was sure, and Ori right in front of him on the floor hadn't even batted an eyelash.  
  
The dwarfling sat there, still as if he were a statue of old tales.  
  
Then suddenly he moved, turning around to search for something, and Nori leapt up where he was sitting. He really did not expect for his brother to make any move.  
  
On the edge of his seat Nori followed closely with his eyes and breath captured between his teeth as Ori scampered around in his search of a mysterious object around the room till he took out from a chest a bottle of blue ink.  
  
The dwarfling sat down again, with his back against the wall, and started writing on a notebook that seemed to appear magically out of nowhere.  
  
Nori looked at his little brother so enraptured in his task and decided it was time to try the tea. He sipped it but made a grimace as the beverage had turned bitter in the meantime. Nonetheless he had to finish it before Dori returned and demanded his head for the offence of wasting his precious imported leaves. Elf.  
  
A bit later, when Nori had already suffered through the whole lukewarm beverage and was lost in his thoughts over the brim of the cup, he felt something pulling the hem of his jacket.  
  
Here there was Ori, with a hand on Nori's cloth and the other occupied offering the notebook.  
  
Nori felt a surge of affection for the child standing in front of him, who was blushing as he showed Nori the result of his work.  
  
He was acting all cute, just like any other dwarfling of his age, and that put Nori at ease.  
  
“What do you want?” Nori looked up from the book to Ori's face “do you want me to read it?”  
  
Ori nodded, not speaking, and Nori gingerly caressed his head before picking the block from his hand, a small smile on his lips.  
  
He opened it to the page marked with a little purple ribbon and proceeded to read it out loud, amused at the fact that he was telling the tale to the same dwarfling who had written it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)  
> This is another one of the stories I submitted for the HobbitCon 3 fanbook.  
> The title says second version 'cause the first one contains DwalinNori, so it would not have been appropriate to give it to William Kircher XD (also it's an unfinished draft on my pc)


End file.
